“I have no doubt, Jekyll.”
“Fuck you, brother,” I muttered. He liked to call me that when referencing my moods. He’d given me the name Hyde for the same reason, but his use of Jekyll as an alternative stemmed from an argument we’d had way back when. He’d been right during that argument, but I’d refused to budge. Every now and then he threw this name at me to remind me of what an asshole I was.
He chuckled. “You reckon she remembers what a prick you can be?”
I reached for the painkillers I’d dropped beside the bed the night before. “I was a different man back then.”
“So she has no idea what’s coming for her?”
My headache increased its efforts to destroy me, and my chest tightened as I listened to him. This conversation irritated me.
As I shook two pills out of the bottle, I snapped, “I’ve got shit to do, King. Are we done here?”
His easy mood disappeared as fast as it came. “Yeah.”
I exhaled my relief when the line went dead. I hadn’t told anyone about Tenille for a good fucking reason. Talking about her and Charlie stirred feelings I didn’t want to have to deal with.
I dropped my phone on the bed and grabbed the bottle of whisky that sat next to the bottle of painkillers. A moment later, I washed the two pills down. Before I screwed the cap back on the bottle, I guzzled enough whisky to get me through the morning. Fuck knew I was gonna need it.
“Where’s Craig?”
Tenille finished stirring the coffees she’d made us, threw the dirty spoon in the sink and slid my mug across the kitchen counter to me. Lifting her mug, she wrapped both hands around it and drank some while looking at me over the rim. As she placed the drink back down, she said, “He got called into work last minute. He’s on his way to Perth now.”
This news was the best thing I’d heard in a couple of days. Now she and I could start working through some shit. “Good.”
She eyed me silently for a few moments, and I wondered what thoughts ran through her mind. Tenille had never been an easy woman to read, but I’d usually managed to have some clue as to what she’d come out with next. Flying blind with her put me at a disadvantage. One I’d rather not have.
“Why did you leave, Aiden? And what’s the real reason you’re back?” All the fight she’d had the day before was gone. In its place, was a simple plea, and it seemed to me that she’d finally come to the place in our journey where she was ready to listen.
I moved my hand to hers and held it. Surprisingly, she let me. Trying to figure out where to start to answer her question took me a minute. I had to get this right if I had any hope of convincing her to give me what I wanted. I wasn’t opposed to being more forceful if I had to, but things would be a lot easier if she came around willingly.
“Do you remember the times I came home from work with blood on my shirt? You used to ask me why, and I used to—”
“You used to avoid my questions and try to distract me with sex. Yeah, I remember.”
“Did you ever wonder what the hell I was keeping from you?”
I expected her to throw something snarky back at me, but she didn’t. Instead, she pulled her hand from mine and said, “At first, yes, but by then we weren’t in a good place. We were both keeping so much from each other and just trying to get through the day. I did anything to avoid an argument with you, including turning a blind eye to whatever you were getting up to outside of work.”
“The blood on my clothes was from work, Tee.”
She blinked a couple of times, but other than that, she gave no other reaction that what I’d said shocked her. Tenille had seen a lot in her life as a teen, so I knew not much surprised her, but I’d expected more than what she was giving me. Hell, some nights after work, I’d come home almost soaked in blood.
When she didn’t say anything, I demanded, “Did you hear what I said?” No way was she not going to take this in. By the time I was finished, she would have some idea of what Shane Gibson was capable of.
“Yes, but I’m not sure where you’re going with this. I asked you two questions, and this doesn’t seem to have anything to do with those.”
“This has every-fucking-thing to do with those questions.” It suddenly felt like we were back where we were fourteen years ago. Snapping and snarling at each other, and not getting anywhere. “Look, I didn’t come back here to argue with you—”
She cut me off, her eyes flashing with that wild anger I knew all too well. “I don’t know what you expected then, Aiden. You don’t get to walk out on your family and come back years later to smiles and fucking gratitude.”
Fuck it. I’d been trying to ease her into it, but I could see that wasn’t going to work. She appeared closed off to any talk of what Gibson had me doing. Maybe shocking her would be the only way. “Gibson made threats against our family to get me to leave.” She blanched at that, but didn’t say anything, so I kept going. “He demanded I fake my death and leave town. The fire was his idea, not mine. Fuck, none of it was my idea or what I wanted. I tried to find another way, but there wasn’t anything else he would agree to.”
“Why would he ask you to do something like that? It doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“The Gibson you know is not the one I knew. He didn’t build his business by smart decisions alone; he used ruthless tactics, and he wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty to make money. I was the person he called on to help him do that.”
She swallowed hard a couple of times. “What kind of threats did he make against us?”
“The cops obviously had something on me about what I’d done for him, and he knew it. He threatened to hurt you and Charlotte if I didn’t leave and also if I ever came back. That’s why I’ve stayed away. But I never stopped caring about you and Charlie. And like I told you yesterday, I always made sure you were both okay.”
She sat back in her chair and ran her fingers through her hair the way she used to when she was nervous. “Jesus, Aiden. I don’t know…. This doesn’t even sound like something Gibson would do.”
“Does it sound like something I would have done?”
“No.”
“Well there’s your answer. I did do it, and only because he taught me to.”
She frowned. “What do you mean he taught you to?”
“I’m fairly sure that he always intended for me to do his dirty work. He took Brad and me out shooting from about the age of fifteen, and he also made sure we knew how to fight. At the time, I thought he was the kind of dad I would have loved to have, but now I see that he wanted us familiar with guns and able to handle ourselves. He encouraged the darker side of me, Tee.”
“So, what, you just happily did all this stuff for him?”